13 years, 5 months and 1 week
by Morgan72uk
Summary: What did McGonagall do during WW2 and before returning to Hogwarts in December 1956?


I wrote this while I was ill – and have only just got around to posting it. I am fascinated by the past in thePotterverse – and by the idea of what wizards and witches might have done in WW2.

Also, I have to confess to being intrigued by what McGonagall did before returning to Hogwarts in December 1956

Title: 13 years, 5 months and 1 week

Author: Morgan72uk  
Rating: T  
Disclaimer: Don't own the characters, don't have any money.

**13 years, 5 months and 1 week**

As she stood before the so familiar entrance, she couldn't help but remember that she had never intended to return.

At first it was because she had loved the school, and all that it stood for, too much. Left without family soon after graduation, with her own way to make in the world, she had concluded that returning would remind her too much of what she now understood were happy and carefree years.

There was a war on and she had felt called upon to play her part, to stand up for what she believed in. She was young, brilliant, brave and it was the kind of war that fed on those qualities, she had allowed herself to be swallowed whole by it.

Later, the shadow of that war had fallen between her and the School. For so long she had been certain that Hogwarts would not be proud of this particular alumni's contribution to the war effort. Her teachers and fellow students were heroes, had given their lives for the cause. She had given her body, spent two years hiding in dark corners, extracting secrets from men too foolish to suspect her.

She had imagined, perhaps mistakenly, that Hogwarts had expected something more glorious of its former Head Girl and, if not the school, then certainly her House. The Gryffindor in her had balked at the discovery that she was capable of deceit and betrayal. The survivor in her was glad of it, those traits might be entirely too Slytherin for comfort – but they were the only things that had kept her alive.

After the war she might not have wanted to remember what she had done, but those who trained her had recognised her skill and bravery. She found the plaudits and attention uncomfortable and their attempts to push her into a public facing role were politely but determinedly declined. The dark corners called to her again and this time her formidable mind was devoted to the reconstruction of their world, to attempts to ensure that never again could wizarding kind meddle in the affairs of muggles.

Others took credit for her work, of course – but it was she who navigated the seemingly endless committees, co-ordinating business across departments and liasing so efficiently with other nations that her next assignment was a 6-month secondment to the German Ministry of Magic that somehow lasted three years.

Diplomacy didn't interest her. She didn't have the insouciance for it. She'd been so successful a spy precisely because she found it distasteful, her cover remaining unbroken because her 'lover' knew her to be a forthright individual with no liking for subterfuge.

It had been particularly satisfying to betray him.

So, diplomacy was never going to be a long-term career – but there was something deadening about the bureaucracy of international magical co-operation that occupied her for years. It prevented her from thinking about more fundamental issues, gave her an excuse to keep at bay all the people who reminded her of a life she believed she could never return to. Most of them got the hint; but some of them remained stubbornly interested in her life, in her well being – even though that interest was salt in so many unhealed wounds.

Transfiguration called to her still and since very few mastered the animagus transformation her books on the subject were well received, not to mention moderately profitable. It all helped enhance the reputation she scarcely gave a thought to. When whispers of her war time activities reached the ears of her colleagues she knew that they found it impossible to imagine her under cover in Berlin. It wasn't a surprise that she had proved to be as successful at running away from herself as she had been at everything else in her life.

When the owl reached her she had been in Vienna, straightening out a diplomatic faux pas caused by a junior member of the department. An advert in the Daily Prophet for a transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts had been torn out and ringed. The note accompanying it was addressed to her, the handwriting familiar from scrawled comments on the bottom of her essays and then later, from orders received when she had been in the field; a relic of times she had all but forgotten. The message itself was painfully simple, Albus had written, "it's time to come home."

She had burnt the note and the advert, refusing to consider the proposal. But, on the next day the same message had been delivered and on every day after that until she had surrendered. She wanted to tell him to leave her alone, to stop interfering in her life, she wanted to tell him that she didn't know how to go back and that even Hogwarts wouldn't want a woman on its staff who had done what she had done. She wanted to tell him that he was the one who needed to forget, to forgive himself for giving her name to the men who had recruited her.

But, she was wearying of her travels, tiring of roaming the globe in search of a peace she didn't entirely believe was to be found - and she missed Scotland.

The great doors swung open and for just a moment she was 11 years old again, terrified but excited – her whole life before her. But the moment passed and with it her last opportunity to not go through this, to slip away unseen.

The figure awaiting her was part of both the past she had loved too much and the years she had tried to forget. Albus' greeting was heartfelt and, if she didn't quite believe his words, for the first time in many years she wanted to.

"Welcome home Minerva."

The End


End file.
